Unarmed Combat
I know Karate, and lots of other Japanese words! The skill of Unarmed Combat is obviously the way to dazzle your enemies with flurries of punches and kicks, and of course resemble Bruce Lee! Uses If you attack an enemy without a weapon, you'll suffer a huge penalty to your Melee Rating. Not only will the skill of Unarmed Combat let you avoid this penalty, but leveling it up can increase your MR (provided you do not equip a weapon) the same way Weaponry can. You can't benefit from any of the specialized weaponry subskills if you’re not using a weapon, but you CAN still carry a shield for an extra MR bonus. Unarmed Combat may also be checked at various points throughout the game, so even if your character does have a weapon, it might still come in handy. Some enemies are immune to damage if it doesn't come from a Magical weapon, such as the Voren-Thul in Stoneback Hill (see Your weapon is ineffective against this enemy! for more examples). To fight these enemies, you can use Powers or acquire one of the Wyxryn's Rings from Tallys (these rings turn your fists into magical weapons). How to get * Choose it at the beginning * Get it at * Buy it from the Adventurers' Collective See also: How to get more skills. Unarmed Combat vs. Weaponry As you can see in the tables below, Unarmed Combat allows you to increment your MR faster in terms of XP spent on the skill, compared to incrementing your level in both Weaponry and one or more Weaponry subskills. Also, combat XP will be less spread, because it can only go to Unarmed Combat or to General. As a further argument, you don't need to worry about what weapon to equip, and you can still use shields. These reasons make some players consider Unarmed Combat as the definitive combat tactic. However, you should take some points into consideration before abandoning Weaponry: * Wyxryn's Rings are only available to Adventurers Guild members, so if you're not AG you'll need some magical weapons in stock to defeat certain enemies. Remember that you can't change your weapon in the middle of a fight, so you have to be extra-cautious since there is no way to tell in-game if an enemy will be immune to common attacks before fighting it. (See Your weapon is ineffective against this enemy! for an incomplete list of these foes.) * You have to give up a ring slot for Wyxryn's Ring, which means sacrificing a potentially significant bonus from a different ring. * Some weapons have special attacks that can be quite devastating (up to 100 damage, and more). Against hard (12+ or more) enemies, these specials can mean the difference between victory and defeat. * Some weapons (like the ) have special properties that you might not want to miss just because you don't have the skill to wield them. * Some weapons have bonuses to SP, NV and/or Stats. As you progress further than a certain point, MR ceases to be the main stat to care about. * Some weapons (like ) have bonuses against certain types of enemies that are hard to come by even with high levels of Unarmed Combat. * Some weapons (like ) have bonuses against specific types of foes. These bonuses are very useful against scaled enemies. As a summary, often it's useful to have decent levels in both Unarmed Combat and Weaponry, to benefit from the special abilities of several useful weapons. Progression of MR When fighting unarmed, you will see a message on your inventory screen that says, "You are fighting unarmed. Your mastery of Unarmed Combat is providing a +X bonus to your Melee Rating." There is a bug, the inventory screen actually tells you HALF the bonus you receive. The original progression of MR bonuses was as follows (thanks to Shadowblack for the data about the higher levels): * Fighting without a weapon and with no Unarmed Combat skill results in a -7 penalty to MR. * Possessing the Unarmed Combat skill at levels 1-19 reduces this penalty to -5. * Level 20 in Unarmed Combat eliminates the penalty completely and further provides a +8 bonus to MR when fighting unarmed. * A further +2 is added at every fourth and tenth level thereafter (i.e. 24, 30, 34, etc), until level 54 * At level 54 the bonus becomes +4 until level 74. * At level 74 the jump is +8 from level 70. * At level 80, the bonus is +4 again, and it keeps that way until level 94, changing to +8 for the last two tiers of the table. As of May 12, 2012 the MR bonus from Unarmed was increased. The following table shows both old and new values. Temporary MR Boosts Starting at level 30, Unarmed Combat (and Weaponry subskills) may randomly increase your MR for a combat round. See this table for details. Also, see Combat for more information about temporary MR changes during combat. Attack Description Related Stats Agility, Body, Mind Category:Skills